


I Look About Me, And Make A Discovery

by elviaprose



Category: David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Jealousy, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 03:57:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9861425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose
Summary: David Copperfield is well educated, well dressed, and has got plenty of money in his pocket. He is, of course, eager to look about him in London.  If only Uriah Heep had not attached himself to David for the first days of the journey...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story gets its title from the chapter it's based on (chapter 19). I've also borrowed several bits of dialogue and descriptions from that chapter, so if the writing seems remarkably good at any point, that's probably why.
> 
> Betaed by x_los. She also helped extensively with brainstorming and development.

The Wickfields’ fine house, with all of its comfortable little nooks and seats, seemed to me not very like Uriah Heep, who was not at all a comfortable person, from flat foot to infernal red crown. If I wished to escape thinking of him, the house ought not to have reminded me--and it did not--except for the terrible stone faces on the beams, and except for when it creaked forward, as it did that damp, cold, Canterbury morning I was to leave for London. From my youth I had thought the house must be nosy, and ever leaning a little closer to the street, the better to see its goings on, and the creaking put me in mind of that, and from that thought followed an image of Uriah in his office, tilted towards me on his stool. 

After my accustomed stay with my Aunt in Dover for Christmas, I was, for the first time, to break the long tradition of my school days and depart from Canterbury just a slender day after returning there. I had until then largely succeeded in avoiding thought or sight of Uriah, save at mid-day yesterday, when Agnes had told me how her father’s health and spirits seemed always to decline after a conference with his clerk. I could well believe it, for I could not think of him myself without feeling an unaccountable dread and anxiety for my future prospects. In his presence I felt myself possessed of a dozen contrary attributes at once: timid and a popinjay; keen as an axe and dull as a candle nub; fortunate beyond my deserving yet more surely bound for ill luck and strife than any other man living. I held him at least in part accountable for my dread and confusion, for I felt it in the presence of no one else. It seemed to me no wonder at all that an hour’s talk with Uriah depressed Wickfield further. 

Now my first hapless thought of Uriah bred against my every intention, as evil thoughts so often do. I began to think that he must already be in the house, at work, though it was hardly dawn. He always came in to work quite early and left quite late. Uriah had his way of getting by in the world; at all hours fawning and flattering, prying and pressing with his long fingers into every cranny of the law. A man must live, and in the general way of things I found it pleasing to think a fellow creature had some cunning trick of making out. Yet in Uriah, his industry vexed me no less than if it had been aimed particularly against me. I could not really account for such an instinct, but yet it gripped me.

Nevertheless, that day I felt generous towards even my old enemy the butcher, and I considered that I probably exaggerated Uriah’s responsibility for my ill-ease, and that I really ought to take courage and his hand (firmly) and part well from him. And yet I could not help thinking how it would be that uncomfortable hand, and how he would speak a great deal (as he had so often these months gone) about my sparkling fortunes, with eyes that did not sparkle at all (though they seldom did twinkle, and I could find no reason that this should mean some particular lack of enthusiasm on his part). 

I had just about decided I might forgive myself not saying goodbye to Uriah when I dropped my trunk quite heavily against the floor. The thump trembled through the boards, and a moment or two later I heard his tread coming up to me. 

He knocked, and called out to me through my door with a quiet wheedling voice, like nothing so much as a fox at the coop or a wolf at the door, that I ought to let him in to help me, for it sounded a struggle in there. I pulled the door open for him and he stumbled forward, a little surprised, into the room.

“Why, I thought it would be more empty than this is, Master Copperfield!” Uriah cried, looking around. “A boy couldn’t but sleep pleasantly with all of this about im, I avent a doubt. Couldn’t bear to toss these things away, I suppose. Of course you’ll be leaving all this, won’t you?”

The cause of Uriah’s remarks was also the cause of my early rising. Though I had already sent most of my things along to my aunt, I had left until the last moment possible the matter of what to do with my old gifts from Mr. Dick. Among these gifts numbered: paper boats (not the simple kind, which any boy might fold up and float down the great river stour, or some smaller trickle of a stream, but great fanciful things with string and straw rigging and sails to catch the wind); Roman chariots made of old court cards; A bird cage made out of old wire, which had never held a living bird, but inside of which perched another of Mr. Dick’s clever creations, a curious little creature made mostly of cork, with beady little eyes; and half of a chess set of cramp bones, for Mr. Dick was very clever at making them, but hadn’t thought to complete a set. 

I was embarrassed that I had not decided on a course, and said nothing.

“Of course you must leave it! Don’t you know how glad they’ll be, Miss Agnes and Mr. Wickfield, to keep some sign of you by?” he said with a great twist of his body, when I made no answer. 

“I suppose you are right, Uriah,” I said. It was true enough. I had delayed reaching that conclusion myself only because I thought it might be childish. But was it not more childish still to fail to mind the feelings of Mr. Dick, Agnes and Wickfield?

By way of a reply, Uriah creased his cheeks in his curious smile.

A tense little quiet followed, in which nothing at all happened. We were curiously frozen. I wondered what he could be thinking, and why he had pressed this particular point. Did he intend to make me abashed of my youthful fancies, which I could not find it in myself to abandon? Or did he enjoy extending this little courtesy to me, as though this were his own grand house? 

I began assembling what little else there was in the room that could be packed into my trunk. Uriah insisted on sending himself whirling about the room like a gawky willow in a gale in the name of helping me pack. I could not account for the cause, but I perceived something nearly frantic in the officiousness of his long limbs. I half expected him to rattle his long arms and sharp knuckles against my window panes like skeleton branches, only inside the room rather than out. 

“Ave you settled on a profession, Master Copperfield, and are you going off to make a start of it?” Uriah asked, after a little while. His voice seemed pitched a little higher than usual. I thought he must know that I had not, and was doing it to vex me, which it accomplished admirably. 

He still seemed to be everywhere in the small room at once, fingers pinching the thin wires of the birdcage as they stroked along its bends and twists, setting it tilting slightly, rifling through my drawers and dresser to admire and stroke whatever he found there before packing it away, skating over the top of my trunk, smoothing the bedspread. It was as though my fondness for the old room and the things I had kept in it had taken physical form as some possessive, grasping demon, and his name was Uriah Heep. I attempted to ignore it so far as I could.

“It’s only a trip of about a month, to think a little on how I might make my way in the world before properly beginning. I thought I’d spend a few days in London first.”

“And then? What are your intentions for the rest of it?” He asked, with great enthusiasm. 

“To see my dear old nurse,” I said, uncomfortably.

“Don’t think you’ve spoken of her, Master Copperfield! If I recollect, which you know perhaps I don’t,” Uriah said. He leaned now in my doorway, his skin and bone hand gripping the frame. “You’ll forgive my loitering about a little now, won’t you? All that’s to be packed is packed now, ain’t it Master Copperfield? Only say the word if it isn’t, to set me on again!”

“I think it must be,” I said. 

“Oh, I am glad to hear it!” He cried. “But you were speaking of a nurse of yours, Master Copperfield, dear to your art, but kept in your art and seldom spoke of.”

“Perhaps I haven’t spoken of her to you,” I said, laboring to keep from falling hard on the final word of the phrase.

“She’s the sort of person to have good advice for you in the finding out of an occupation, is she, Master Copperfield?”

I should have liked to put an end to the conversation, but now I felt I must tell him a little of Peggotty, to clear myself of the charge of not speaking much of her. I thought how well he still knew how to corkscrew my memories from me, even without his mother to help him do it.

“I couldn’t imagine a more loyal friend than Peggotty. She has promised that there is always a room in her house for me, and I mean to take her at her word, for a little while.”

“As there is ere, certainly, Master Copperfield!” Uriah cut in with a writhe, his hand sliding up the doorframe, and then back down. I wondered if it would be damp where he’d held it. “Certainly this room will always be yours in one way or other! Whatever of your worldly belongings you carry with you or leave behind, this room will remain Master Copperfield’s, as sure as if there was a plate engraved to such an effect. Although it is not my place, Master Copperfield—and I don’t do it!— to extend such ospitatily, that being the prerogative of Mr. Wickfield and Miss Agnes, but I know them to ave made as much clear to you time and again, and so you’ll forgive me, I ope. And what sort of ouse is it, where you may always ave a room, Master Copperfield?” 

I thought it very likely then that he did like to feel himself master of Wickfield’s house, as I had previously considered. I supposed he was more master of it than I was, after all. Save for the boat and the birdcage and the chess set, it would almost be as though I had never been there: Uriah at his work in his office, Wickfield in his, and Agnes about the house, at the piano or a book or her embroidery. It was not really my place, I thought with some wistfulness. Uriah looked at me, for I had not spoken for some little while. 

“Master Copperfield?” He asked. 

“It’s a beautiful little home, with a welcoming parlor wide windows to let the light in, and tile in the kitchen,” I told him, thinking that Peggotty’s cottage made the third house in England that was open to me, but yet not quite my home. “She married a fine man called Barkis, who keeps her well there.” I thought of Barkis asking Peggotty if she really was pretty comfortable, and about the box where he kept all of his money, which he claimed to be filled with nothing but old clothes, and about Peggotty coaxing him into spending what was needed. I thought of the old wooden bureau I’d been so fond of as a child, and how I had looked (I can hardly call it reading, for I can’t recall a word, but I know the images by heart) at Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which she kept inside the bureau. So strong was the impression it had made on me that I still thought of that book and its drawings whenever I thought of Peggotty’s house. As my words gave way to memories, my troubled thoughts and my vexation with Uriah alike gave way to a fondness for Peggotty and all of the scenes of my life to date. How changeable I was that morning! 

Uriah made no comment on Peggotty’s property, but met my growing smile with a similar expression of his own. A queer unease was between us again as we regarded each other quietly. His fingers scraped and scraped at his jaw, until at last, giving me a sidelong look, he asked “What would you say, Master Copperfield, if I was to come with you on your way to London? Supposing I ad business there.”

Had I been permitted to speak entirely freely I might have said any number of things, none of them kind. I immediately set myself to thinking how I might get out of it without being quite so free as that. My Aunt had been very firm in her conviction that I ought to make the journey without anybody, not even Mr. Dick, but I didn’t wish to appeal to her judgment, for I was at pains to appear grown up. 

“I should like to make my way alone,” I tried, “the better to see what my calling might be when I am away from the people and places of my youth. I think perhaps having so much that is familiar about me is making it more difficult to consider what I should like from my future.”

“I’m sure sure that’s wise, though it’s my own umble view that new sights ain’t much without a friendly soul—however umble he might be—to remark on em to. I hope you ain’t sacrificing all your pleasures to this aim of yours to find a calling, for it’s a rare chance you’ve got to travel to such a great city as London with a fine education and money in your pocket and no real work that needs doing.”

I thought this an uncharitable portrait of the situation, all ‘round. It was, I supposed, to be something of an idle time, but also spent to a purpose. Rather than argue this point, which seemed likely to yield him the upper hand, I objected on different grounds. “I’ve been in London before, in fact, so they won’t be entirely new sights.” 

“Ave you really? On what occasion? I never knew you to go to London.” 

“It was before I came here, but I remember the city quite well, having lived there two years.” I regretted mentioning as much, and worried he’d press me further, as he seemed to delight in doing. I bent down to adjust the buckles of the trunk, though I knew they didn’t need any such attending to. He did press, but not quite in the direction I expected. 

“You’ll forgive me, I hope, Master Copperfield, for a little more talk. You see I am ever and always seeking for opportunities to put to use what umble skill I ave acquired in my trade. I am not at all gifted—don’t I know it!—but I have hoped I might through practice improve myself in a small way.” Here he paced into the room and joined his hands behind his back, as though the were a barrister before a court (though he was not that sort of lawyer). “I hope you won’t grudge me too much in this exercise, knowing it’s only in the service of trying to raise up my umble prospects as I can, and knowing yourself what it is to have such fears and hopes for the future as could send a young man (such as we both are) sleepless a fortnight together. Now you say you don’t wish to have the people and scenes of your youth about you.” Here the difficulty of keeping his hands constrained seemed to get the better of him, and he began to tap out this observations on his chin, in just the way he often liked to tap out some little tune only he could hear. “You say too that London is a place familiar to you from your youth, and that then you’re on to Suffolk, also familiar from youth. And there you’re to see your old nurse, who is exceedingly familiar from youth, perhaps even the principal object of your youthful affections and trust. It seems not inconsistent then with your decided course to pass some little part of the time—the journey to London and one night, perhaps—with myself, also familiar from youth. Now tell me if it don’t hold, Master Copperfield, for I aven’t got the tenth part of your education or talent.”

“I see no flaw in it, as a legal sort of point,” I said. I thought that he must know he possessed the devil’s own cunning. Though why he should exert himself in such an argument, I couldn’t fathom, unless it was simply to generally spoil my grand ideas of myself by dogging along. How was I to make my mark on the world with Uriah by my side? He seemed everything I wished myself not to be, and I felt that as long as I stayed at his side I would be the scrappy boy I had been when he had first looked upon me (and how long, and hard he had looked, his pen going all the while). And there was the trouble of his manner. There was no denying at all that he did often get what he desired. Didn’t I know by now that his power grew the more he insisted on his humbleness? Yet it bred little good will and gave him no good reputation, and I wondered whether I should benefit, as his companion, from his tricks, or only be disdained for them, while Uriah alone enjoyed their profits.

“Oh, thank you Master Copperfield! I must try not to give myself hopes, for my prospects are very umble, but when you say such a thing—well, it is a fine thing to hear you say it. Why I shall hardly feel the sting if you tell me after all that you simply don’t want me along.”

He had me, he absolutely had me, and there was nothing for it but to share my journey with him. He tripped his way out and down in a great hurry to book his seat on my eleven o’clock coach, which, for all that I wished the devil himself would be Uriah Heep’s coachman, and bear him away to some place considerably less pleasant, would speed us both together to London. 

**

I mounted the box seat, and Uriah got up behind me, into a less grand position. I was got up in a special great-coat and shawl for the occasion. He wore his own awful mulberry great-coat. He lacked a shawl, but did carry an umbrella (which was like a small tent when opened) in case of rain later in our journey. 

“You are going through, sir?” asked the coachman.

“Yes, William,” I said, condescendingly (I knew him), “I am going to London. I shall go down into Suffolk afterwards.”

“That’s all right,” William said complacently. “And ow’s your mother, Uriah?” 

This question came as a surprise to me as I had not imagined Uriah and William to be acquainted, though I supposed I should have expected it. Uriah had lived in Canterbury longer than I, after all, and had traveled to London more often. He got about, for all that I thought of him as wholly a creature of his little round office and his pinched, spare house. Uriah replied that she was tolerably well in her umble fashion, and asked after William’s own aged parents. From there the subject shifted to orses, and which coachmen seemed to ave the finest of em, and what manner of people ad been going up and down from London of late, and in what sort of temper, and ad there been any surprising or impressive personages in William’s coach. Neither said another word to me for the duration of the coach ride, and I thought at the time it must be deliberately done by both parties. I had felt this trip rather a momentous one, and they seemed determined to take the wind out of it as far as possible while the coach still moved forward. 

And yet the trip was not without its enjoyments. Here, and there, and here again I recognized my stops and starts as a barefoot boy of eleven, and I felt a kind of painful pleasure in knowing I was so far out of all that trouble, sitting now behind the four horses, well educated, well dressed, and with plenty of money in my pocket. I knew that whatever became of me I would never forget what it was to be without a home, and hoped always to do what I could for those less fortunate than I. For all he never said a word to me, Uriah’s chin was cocked over my shoulder, so near that his breath quite tickled the back of my head, and whenever I looked back at him he seemed almost to leer at me, with his red, lidless eyes. The feeling set me very queer, but I found I nearly liked it just then. He had looked at me from the first as no stranger or even friend ever had regarded me. It had always made me a little uncomfortable, but it was rather interesting now to receive such looks, as I considered how I must look to the people I had met in my life, and what I had been, and what I now was. In a wide, wide world, I felt under his stare that I was somebody after all, and I thought that perhaps Uriah was not so very mistaken in saying that I should enjoy the sights of London more for having a companion to share them with.

We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighbourhood. Uriah leapt from the coach almost before it had come to a halt and insisted on humbly helping me down from my high box seat. He dried his hand first on his handkerchief, but still it felt cold in mine.

“Master Copperfield,” he said leaning close to my ear, speaking in a confidential tone and giving my hand a last wring before releasing it, “I have a very great favor to beg of you. You see, I am in London on Mr. Wickfield’s business, but I’ve got some ideas he don’t about how I ought to go about keeping the firm busy and thriving. I find it useful to ave all the London law clerks of my acquaintance to dine out with me, and to get word that way of what’s happening in the legal world, but Mr. Wickfield don’t find it a good use of funds. Mr. Wickfield’s a great man, but he don’t know everything about how to keep the firm in a good way, you know! Mr. Wickfield says to me, Uriah, keep your own business your own business and let others have theirs. And Mr. Wickfield, he lives by those words! Why, even when it came to Mr. Maldon—but never mind that now, Master Copperfield. Mr. Wickfield don’t take much to putting me in the way of all that wining and dining, though I tell him I’ll be discreet enough, and I will. But when I says, ‘I’ve heard how this or that fellow in London’s had some trouble with what you propose, sir, perhaps you ought to try a different course, sir?’ Well, I’ve found it satisfies pretty well. Now my own wages aren’t so great that I wouldn’t find it a pinch to pay out of my own pocket. I will if I must, for I have a great mind to do my office as best as my umble powers permit. The point is, Master Copperfield, due to this little difference of opinion between Mr. Wickfield and myself he asn’t given me as much as he might’ve to put me in the way of umbly serving him, and if you wouldn’t be opposed to keeping me out of a squeeze—” here he put his two hands together hard, as though he was pressing shillings out of them, “ it would be a great elp if you’d share your room in the otel with me.”

I had seen Wickfield at work for many years and thought on more than one occasion he might be a little more active in looking out for his clients (especially Doctor Strong). I thought Wickfield must be the better man on almost every pitch the battle might be waged, and yet on this point of professional contention I did not disagree with Uriah. Wickfield had only one motive, by his own admission, and it was not to aid his clients or his firm. How much was Wickfield’s determination in this matter his nobleness of mind, and how much his narrowness of outlook? Meanwhile even I, who was no friend to him, could see that Uriah drove himself morning ‘til night in the firm’s service. And so it was that I said, “I suppose I could spare a few shillings in order that you might have a room of your own, Uriah.” 

He jerked away from his intimate position near my ear to protest violently against this. He couldn’t ask so much! No! He couldn’t possibly! I felt he was asking rather more in requesting to share my room and my bed, but since I had already once proved myself wholly unequal to swaying Uriah from his prefered course, I assented sooner than I might have done.

A waiter showed us into the coffee-room, and a chambermaid introduced us to our small bedchamber, which smelled like a hackney-coach and was shut up like a family vault. I worked myself into a fine little temper with the notion that perhaps if Uriah had not been my second shadow, I might have made a more formidable impression and had a grander room. But though I should have liked to lay the blame at his foot alone, I could not help but think that for my own part I was young and bashful, and it had seemed that where the chambermaid hardly took notice of Uriah, she fixed on me a laughing eye that found me both fitting for such a room and unlikely to protest it.

**

We went out, for it was still quite early. I thought perhaps to go alone and leave Uriah to his own entertainments, but it occurred to me that we might see a play at the Covent Garden Theater. I thought it a pity to have no friend along for that, even if my companion must be Uriah if I were to have anyone. The streets were as crowded as I had remembered them to be. Uriah seemed to keep his eyes humbly turned down, but every now and then he would lean close, pointing out this or that personage of interest—and he did have an eye for the absurd and the grotesque. He insisted on buying me a gingersnap from a street seller, to thank me in his humble way for sharing my room with him. It was only a penny, but then upon tasting it I could very well see why. 

“Well?” he asked, leaning towards me and putting creases in his cheeks. 

It was hard and dry. Absolutely awful, and I thanked heaven there was very little of it. 

“Nothing to your mother’s tea,” I told him. I thought this was a suitable evasion, but he doubled over with silent laughter. 

It was my first play in London, and I shall never forget it. Perhaps I have seen Julius Caesar better acted since, but I have never felt the actors to discover more truth in the play, for the poetry to take on fuller dimension in their mouths. Never have I loved it quite so well as I did that night. Caesar was ailing and mistrustful, proud and foolish, yet formidable. To know how he should fear Cassius, yet fail to act upon that fear for his great pride! Brutus was noble and troubled, too bent on honor always to be kind, yet in earnest in his efforts to do right. I confess I wept at his death. Cassius was sly, a forger and a liar and a cheat, but passionate in friendship, offering up his heart honestly for Brutus in penitence. And Marc Antony! It set my own heart nearly pounding through my chest when he cried havoc. Oh, I thought, that every aimless young gentleman should so set himself on the world and claim greatness. 

I liked the play so well that I felt almost as though it were mine, and that everyone who disliked it disliked my own personal possession. Many of the other patrons of the play, I noticed to my dismay, seemed to be nodding off to sleep, but Uriah seemed no less enraptured than myself. He writhed beside me, frequently letting out soft cries and exclamations. I distinctly heard him mutter “stab im!” which was not quite my own sentiment at that moment. Nevertheless I found myself pleased, even grateful that he liked it so well. Quite against my own will, my hand found Uriah’s time and again. I clutched it, I fear, so continuously that it lost most of its customary chill.

We reeled out together into the dirty London night like two happy drunks. His long arm fell around my shoulders and I laughed, to think what a sight we were. I looked around me and saw all of the other faces untouched by poetry, and wondered how it could be, how they could not have been transformed as we had, how the world could go on as it had, unchanged.

“Oh, Master Copperfield, I have never seen such a thing,” Uriah almost gasped, and I nodded, without words to reply.

It was one o’clock when we returned to the hotel. He said he wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, and I thought I should like one as well. I imagine we neither of us felt ready for sleep after such high passions as we had felt. We were just sitting down in the coffee room when I saw a familiar face. For a moment, I could scarcely believe it. He made nothing of me, but I could never have mistaken him for anyone but my dear Steerforth. The play had put me into high emotion, and gave me the courage to approach him. At first he did not recognize me, but after a time he cried, ‘My God! It’s little Copperfield!’

I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go. But for the fear that it might displease him, I could have held him ’round the neck and cried. I told him how my aunt had adopted me, and he told me how he was an Oxford man. He laughed to hear how I had loved the play, for he had been there too and found it dreary.

I could never be angry with Steerforth. Certainly not for something so small as finding Julius Caesar dreary, or calling me a very Daisy for thinking it otherwise. In our Salem House days, he had always been so good to me, and I would always love him for it, and for his wit and charm and his easy way with the world. Not being warmed with anger, I might have rather been hot with shame at liking the play so well where he, the better educated and more worldly of the two of us, found it silly. Yet even in those early days I held a conviction that stands firm to the present day: whatever its object, and whatever the opinions of other men, love should not be ashamed, for it lifts up our lives and our souls. 

And so the moment of our disagreement passed without any ill feeling, except a wistful notion in me that in the very moment that we met again, we parted ways a little by this difference. He asked what room I was in, and I told him. He called the waiter over and stated very plainly that I should have a different, better one, and the man withdrew immediately to make the exchange. Steerforth, very much amused at my having been put into forty-four, laughed again, and clapped me on the shoulder again, and invited me to breakfast with him next morning at ten o’clock—an invitation I was only too proud and happy to accept. It being now very late, we took our candles and went upstairs. 

It was only upon saying goodnight to Steerforth that I realized I had lost Uriah somehow. I went back down, but he was not to be found in the coffee room. At last I found him, in poor old forty-four.

By my candle I could see Uriah. In one hand was his neckerchief, removed from his neck. His other rested on a pitcher of water, which I think perhaps he meant to use to dampen the kerchief in order to cool his brow. His eyes, which I had always thought to be lidless, were tightly closed, and he was doing nothing with either of the objects he held. Instead he was muttering something, which sounded very like “admit it, you must admit it, admit he has never liked you as you have liked him.”

“Uriah?” I said, and he started violently, clutching the pitcher tightly to keep from spilling the water or dropping it.

“Master Copperfield!” He replied. 

“My dear friend Steerforth has spoken to the the waiter and gotten us moved to seventy-two, a far more commodious room, next to his. Uriah, are you ill?”

Uriah stared at me a moment, seeming not to comprehend me at all. Then he put the pitcher down, and treated me to a particularly ghastly writhe, his white clay face baked and fired into a rigid mask.

“Why, I am taken rather suddenly ill, yes. I am sorry to be taken so ill before you could introduce me to your friend!” he said.

“Never mind, although I think you should have liked him very much, as everyone does.”

Before he could reply, the waiter knocked, with the intelligence that seventy-two, next to Mr. Steerforth, was aired and ready, sir, and if we’d allow him to have our luggage shifted over he’d be obliged.

This time the room was not at all musty, and having an immense four-post bedstead in it, with pillows enough for six, I thought it quite a little landed estate.

I anticipated that Uriah would comment on it, as he had my room at Wickfield’s. There was always something a little uneasy to me in remarks of his of this kind, which he loved to make. Those sundry personages who have not had the pleasure to know Uriah Heep have probably not found occasion to think much on the fineness of expensive things, and whether, though they be built to draw notice, admiration, pleasure and even envy, their fineness is somehow nevertheless a secret shame, and not to be spoken of. Without fail his exclamations put me uncomfortably in mind of the fact that he did not have much by way of material comforts, himself. Nevertheless, I think if he had been richer than Croesus, his manner of praise would yet have been a little uncomfortable. 

Still, it had become almost an expectation by now that he would carry on about this or that or the other thing, and I did not like his silence on the matter as we prepared ourselves for sleep. We stripped to our small clothes and then without a word we each lay down on our half of the bed, putting out our candles. 

In the dark I felt a terrible shudder and an accompanying gasp. It sounded like Uriah’s narrow chest had collapsed in on itself. I sat up abruptly, afraid he was somehow suddenly dying.

“Oh, I can’t possibly bear it,” he groaned.

I looked over to see him agonizingly convulsed, clutching a pillow. “Don’t look at me! If you ave got any kindness keep your back turned on me! But it’s my own fault if you do ave a look, for I thought—what a thing to sleep so close to him for a night.” His voice made me think of rust being scraped away from cast iron. 

Uriah had told me often enough of his ‘umble circumstances,’ but he had never confessed to me pain on that account, or any other. He seemed now on the brink of some awful confidence. It struck me that I was not certain he had ever told me his true feeling towards anything in the world until now. After a moment, he continued on: “About the only thing that makes me feel alive, Master Copperfield, is your company. Did you know that? I’ve never in my life wanted a woman—certainly not Miss Agnes, for all I——but YOU. You I wanted so as my bones ached.” He choked a little on his words for a moment, but then went on. “And I couldn’t find it in myself to let you part from me when we was packing, I couldn’t stand to do it, so I saw my way to coming a little ways with you. To know how soon you’ll leave me, that was ard as nails. But to see how it is you are with one as you really like, to see you with HIM. When I had only just thought why, together these hours we’ve been better than flint and steel, for how we’ve struck a spark. I des-say I’m put right on the matter now. I see that after all it wasn’t anything to you. I would appear that though I am very umble, I can be a little vain.” Here for a moment spoke with a dark ironical bitterness such as I had I’d never heard from him before. Then his voice trembled again with grief: “If I could have died before I saw you look at him that way, if I could have died in the theater tonight—oh, my art. It’s breaking. It’s certainly breaking.” 

The whole bed shook as he struggled for breath. He was in a violent, terrible passion. I didn’t dare turn, and for what felt an eternity he gasped and writhed. Horrible sounds came from his throat. I was terrified, and sick. I felt as if I’d been burned in a fire, and after a long awful time I realized I was trembling. 

When he quieted a little, I propped myself up against the headboard to look at him. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done it. He had asked me not to, and the sight of him dealt me quite a blow. But then if I hadn’t, what followed would never have happened.

I saw his long arm extended over his shoulder and his lank hand stroking his own back, as if to comfort himself where no other would. It moved me to shame and anger and pity and tenderness, and I shifted towards him through the soft bed and the many pillows. I put my arms around him, and stopped that hand with my own. I had never before admitted to myself that I had shrunk from any attempt to understand Uriah because I had, since I had known him, feared that his soul might resemble my own, after all. I now confronted the idea at last and it sent knives through me--and yet somehow I nearly liked admitting it. 

“Such kindness you show me!” he exclaimed, with a raw throat. He gave me a sly sort of look, and a twisted sort of smile. A smile as though he mocked himself. A smile as though he thought he must be very low and base, but forgave it in himself. “I suppose you wouldn’t permit a kiss. No, I really don’t suppose you would. Not from me—”

I kissed him. It was too much out of instinct to be out of desire at all. It was something like touching my lips to a heated iron; at the first instant there was no feeling at all, but then—oh, then, my body cried out at it. It was not a cry of pain, and I clutched him to me tighter, rubbing my hand across the red bristles of his hair, which were wet now (for he had exerted himself awfully), down to the pale nape of his neck. There his bristles made the skin seem all the softer and more wonderful to touch. I had never touched anyone so intimately before, and had never imagined my first encounter would be a sodomitical one, and with Uriah Heep! And yet it seemed an incredible thing that I should be allowed to do it, welcomed in doing it. I loved the feel of it, of him, immensely. It was not a damp enough embrace to drown me, though damp, and yet I felt I was sinking down not into the good white sheets but into quicksand or some marshland bog or a foamy sea. 

We kissed a long time. We did it until I was quite dazed and had nearly forgotten what I was doing (if I had ever known), except that it was lovely. When he put his tongue out to touch the corner of my mouth, it brought from me a little cry, and I came back to myself and considered where our actions were taking us. I could not have stopped our proceedings where we now stood without great cruelty to him. That spared me having to consider, for the moment, whether I wanted to do it (which I very much did).

“Would you like it if I—” I bolted out awkwardly. I really had no doubt now he would, but it seemed too sudden simply to begin at it.

“Yes,” he whispered with shudder, and he sounded almost angry. “You might do anything to me and I’d like it, Copperfield.”

I took him in my hand, as I’d done for myself many times. 

“That’s it. That’s just it,” he said quietly. “Ain’t it curious,” Uriah muttered, half, I think, to himself, and half to me, and between soft cries of pleasure, “that though it’s considered an out of the way sort of thing to take one’s pleasure with another man, it’s surely something that every one of us knows naturally how to do? And ain’t it wonderful? Master Copperfield you can’t know how I like it when you touch me like that, you can’t know how I like you. Your hands, and your eyes—I can’t even look at directly at em the greater part of the time for their being so quick and taking.” 

I did not know what to say to any of this, but it affected me very greatly. Our eyes did meet, and I thought he must be right that it happened very seldom, for it sent such a shock through me as could have riven soul from body. He cried out my given name, which I was rarely called by anyone at all, and had never before been called by him. I thought to stroke my hand (only one was busy) over his hip, and that little piece of tenderness sent him into an agony of bliss and finished it. 

“That was a great liberty I took,” he said. “I do apologize!” He might have meant any thousand things, but I had some intuition that it was, incredibly, his use of my Christian name (of all things!) that he referred to. 

“Nonsense,” I said uncomfortably, and gave his back a clumsy sort of pat. I didn’t know where I was coming from or where I was going to. I wondered what we had done. Still, I was trembling as much with excitement as anything else. My breath came nearly as hard as his, and my skin if it could have spoken would have used all the eloquence it had to ask for his touch. My mouth, however, made no such request, as the minutes passed. A distance stretched between us on the bed once again. And yet I knew this was not the end of it. The strength of his passion for me left me in such great certainty of that that I did not even think to consider that he might have ended it there. 

“Well! Would you tell me, Master Copperfield,” he said, “if there’s any little thing that’s ever given you a queer sort of shiver down your back to think of?”

“You, Uriah,” I said, and it was true. I thought it the least I could do to admit as much. Until I saw his response, I assumed he had known, and only asked to hear it. He gripped my shoulders too hard in his bony hands and gasped in delight for a while. It was the first time I had ever known myself to provoke such an emotion in him. I had moved him to great pleasure only minutes ago, but it had been something both greater and less than happiness. Although he nearly bruised me with his hold, I found that I positively exulted in his joy. He released me, and stroked my cheek softly with the back of his hand. 

I felt a greater sense of my own power and triumph than I had ever before felt in all my life. Though I had not thought of it directly, I had long been aware that there were people who opened themselves to my charms and let me shape the eddy and flow of our intercourse, and people who did not. I had since I could remember possessed a certain way of of speaking, a certain mildness, a certain kindness, a certain interest, which I offered up and expected others to like in me. I made myself winning, and I hoped to win people to me. I had always wanted Uriah to indulge me a little, to find me pleasant and good, since the moment I had seen him. It had been this, as much as any impulse of true generosity, that had made me offer to teach him Latin. In the frantic torrent of his first confession to me, I had not quite grasped what I now understood: my influence upon Uriah was great indeed. It was an incredible relief to know it. It was an incredible relief to admit that I craved that power, that I was grasping and even a little devious in that aspect. That to a certain degree my anger at Uriah had been the distress of one villain who has been thwarted by another. In keeping his resentment and his ambition and his passion to his breast he kept the force of it for himself and I was nothing before it all, a worm in the grass mowed down before him. But now he had put himself before me like an actor on the stage, trembling in expectation my response. I felt fearless and ready. Let him be who he was, and I who I was.

“I couldn’t have dreamed of such a reply,” he said breathlessly. “But what other little thing? For you have been so very, very good to me, I should like to do something out of the ordinary if I can, to please you in return.” This last was said not without some bitterness, I thought.

It was not long before an answer came to my mind. I had some nights pleased myself with my hand. A dreamy boy, I always did a little bit of imagining to help me on my way. Most often I imagined a tender wedding night with whichever girl I believed I loved at the moment. I had never thought to consider my “queer shivers” and whether they might be put to such a use as Uriah proposed. As was usual with Uriah, he had found just the words to discover to myself, as Cassius might have said, that of myself which I yet knew not of. I had often found myself all too readily telling various things to Uriah, and that susceptibility had always made me uncomfortable, for I had never been sure I could trust him with what I told him. Now I did not quite trust him still, but I found that I longed to tell him and held very little of the old fear of him.

“My nurse had an old book of martyrs, which she kept inside a wonderful old wooden bureau. When I visited her just after she’d married, I must have read it a dozen times or more. I’ve quite forgotten every word it said, but I remember even now how I loved to look at the drawings in it, especially when the people in them were tied up tight.” I blushed all the way to my to my chest, I think. Oh, what a thing it was to admit to finding pleasing. The one I had always looked on the longest and liked the best was not an image of pain, and it was not pain that I wanted. It showed a man stripped of nearly all of his garments save one rag about his waist. He was mounted on a tall wooden post. A second man stood behind him, pulling at a dark chain about his chest, dragging it tight. The bound man was barrel breasted, but his every bone was plain and sharp, in bold ink (I wondered if I would have thought quite so readily of the book, and of being tied, if Uriah’s skeleton frame did not put me a little in mind of him). His bearded face held little fear in it, though I searched his shadowed eyes for it each time I reached that page. It seemed almost as though his chains were a support to him and gave him fright, but also comfort as well, and in equal measure. I thought of what it would be, to be bare before Uriah, and to let him tie me and make me afraid, and yet give me strength and hold me tight in a way I could never manage alone. I thought of any person he must be the one to do this.

“Oh, thank you,” Uriah murmured. “I could hardly imagine anything I’d better like to be told. Now should you like to be tied? Is that what you’d like? And in what sort of a way? I could have you pinned down or trussed up, stretched out or bunched up.” He seemed to relish the question. “Think carefully! Don’t rush now,” Uriah said intently. 

I flushed again in the darkness, but I considered it as he bade me. I felt keenly that I should like that very much from him now.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I think I should like to be tied up, rather than tied down—I can’t say why that should be, only that I like the idea of it much better.”

Uriah writhed in enthusiasm. “Do you think, for instance, you should like it if I tied you _up_ to one these ‘ere bedposts? Now, you’re too small to stretch across this great bed, so I’ll have to tie you up to just one.” I thought he must be teasing me a little by letting his voice fall and drag on that one particular word, but teasing or no it sent a wonderful ache through me each time he said it. When I swallowed Uriah seemed to notice it--he watched me very carefully--and to enjoy it to his bones.

“Yes,” I said yet again, shivering. 

“Then that’s how it’ll be!” he said, springing up very abruptly. I wondered how he might accomplish this task. He opened his portmanteau with exceedingly quick fingers and searched through it. He seemed remarkably sure of where each and every item lay, even in the dark, and remarkably sure of his course of action as well. In the gloom I could see he’d taken out a little knife and a pile of handkerchiefs. Next thing I knew he was taking the knife to them, slicing them in two one by one, and then joining them with neat little knots, as though he made a makeshift rope every day. 

I found I liked watching him at this clever work of cutting and knotting. I admired the quickness of his planning, and thought he looked almost like some resourceful young hero about to make a daring escape through his lover’s high window, and I felt a little delicious shock of pleasure in the unlikeliness of the sight. 

“They’re only umble old rags, it’s nothing to tear them,” he said, when he was nearly finished. I thought he seemed a little sorry, after all, for the violence he’d put them to. I found I quite liked this in him, and I smiled at him. He began to laugh his silent laugh, and I joined him with laughter of my own. 

Then, gently, he tied me. I felt a thrill of fear, but trusted he wouldn’t harm me. The position was a little awkward, but I loved the feeling of his cold fingers, gentle around my wrists, knotting the rope carefully. I loved the pull of being held up in that position, I loved the pressure of the rope against my wrists, a comforting, strong touch that hurt just a little in a way that made me aware of my own skin in a way I never had been before. I loved that it was Uriah doing it, who was himself so like the knotted rope that he had made at my request. I wanted him twined around me, I wanted to feel him, I wanted to see him, wanted his words to twist me up and caress me and force me upright against the world’s fire. 

“There now, ain’t you a picture! Mind if I light another candle to look at you by?” 

I agreed. In the candlelight he looked both dreadful and wonderful. His hands looked impossibly long and deft. His skin was the color of lead. He was all angles and bones, and his eyes looked like a starved man’s when they looked on me. They were curiously green, as they sometimes were in dim light. 

“May I put my mouth on you? My hands are terribly cold, and I fear you wouldn’t like them so well.” He paused a moment. “Besides, I should like to do it.”

“I’d like you to,” I told him, feeling very brave in admitting as much. 

At this he made a sound that was not quite speech. He seemed almost to hesitate a moment, but I knew it was not because he disliked the activity, for the instant his lips touched me, he let out such a sound of pleasure as I had never heard. And then--how clever and gentle and yet greedy was his tongue! He only very seldom closed his lips around me tightly. I loved when he did, but I also loved when he didn’t. When he only caressed me lightly and did not suck, he let out little sighs that made me shake. I pulled a little against the ties on my wrists and loved the sensation of them pulling back against me, holding me there for him. It was strange to think that I was using my body so differently than I had ever used it before. Sometimes the strangeness of it frightened me a little, but the pull of the ropes and the touch of Uriah’s mouth were both as comforting as they were frightening. His fingers stroked the cloth about my wrists, and the wrists themselves, again and again. Once again he made that sound, as if he would speak. I managed to stammer out that I should like to hear anything he might say.

“I like you so, Copperfield. But I aven’t the words,” he said. “I really haven’t the words to tell you how andsome, and how good, and what a fine little orator--” 

“Uriah,” I protested hotly, “How can you love me for all of that? My outward looks, I suppose, don’t alter depending on the company I keep, for better or worse, but you of anyone must have witnessed the least of my talents and the least of my goodness.”

“Do you think I don’t have eyes, when you’re with Missus Strong or Miss Agnes?” Uriah said with great passion. “And do you think I ain’t conscious that I’ve kept you on your back foot these six years?”

There was a sweetness in this remark I had never had from him before. How good, how very good Uriah was being to me. It was a curious thought, but that night he was as he never had been before. When he returned to work on my body, he was more fervent than ever. This act for my sake seemed touch him, beyond what even my own attempts to please him had done for him. 

“Do--do you like very much to see what an impression you can make on me?” I found the breath to ask him. 

“Oh, Heavens yes,” he said, and as his hands and his mouth closed over me firmly and longingly, I thought that in that we were very alike. I reached the height of my pleasure in his hold like that. I thought: oh, oh, oh, I am very grateful to him, and could we do it again with better rope, and then I thought nothing at all for some moments.

Uriah did not begin to untie me. Instead, he shifted over gingerly on the bed as though he were trying to step without making a stair creak, and then he spoke. “I must put to you a question, Mister Copperfield. What’s all this to you? If it’s to be the last time I know such pleasure, I’d like to be aware of it. I ain’t handsome, that you can see for yourself, and I aven’t much in the way of money, as you know very well. But all that you could overcome. It’s a mean heart you can’t stand, and I’ve got one, though it ain’t all my fault. I’ve been treated ill all my life. At school morning til night I was told to keep my head down and be umble, and not taught anything else of any use. I’ve been shoved about many a time more than even I could count. I’ve been put down a long time, and I have a spirit as won’t bear it. I’ve been praying on Wickfield. I fill up his glass with his port time and again, I fill him up with guilt and dread, and get im to sign papers he oughtn’t to be signing. He thought he’d get a numble boy to do his work for him and never complain, or ask more than a few shillings for his poor mother. Well, I thought, it’ll pay him if he’s got to make me a partner after all—for I’ve done the work of one a long time—and to give me Agnes for my wife, as though I were a man he thought something of, like YOU. Oh, yes, I’ve been plotting and scheming a good long while. I resent a good many of your friends, I’m sorry to say.”

There had been something very brave in him as he faced me down with all of this, and for a moment when he had finished speaking he looked into my eyes with a kind of ferocious darkness. I wondered if meeting his eyes would ever fail to strike me as profoundly as it had that night. Then his courage failed him. His shoulders came up higher towards his chin in a cringe, and his voice took on its softer, lighter pitch he used when he was trying to smooth his way in the world. “And yet I’d give the worst of that up, for I think I could bear being trodden on, and forgive it, if David Copperfield loved me,” he said. Then he paused, and seemed to consider that he might have put himself in the way of some trouble with that. “Now that ain’t a bargain I’m offering you, for I like you too much for that. Don’t flatter me so as I’ll behave rightly towards Wickfield! Don’t do it, Copperfield, for Lord but I’ll know if you do, I’ll know and I’ll despise you! Don’t think my love for you, though it never will burn out, will stop me hating you. If I am in despair on that account, I’ll make certain everyone else drowns in it alongside me.” 

Strange to say, but I felt such love for him in that moment. No one in the world had ever offered up their soul to me as he had. No one had ever made me feel so alive, so full of feeling. No one had made the world seem so real, so true, so full of strife and struggle and excitement. Like a hard fruit stone buried in my chest, watered and tended at last, my love for him had come up. It hurt me. So it would hurt to have an apple tree grow up from my body, but it pleased me like a strange wondrous thing, like damp wood and white blossoms and bushels and bushels of the crispest, sweetest apples anyone had ever tasted. He had always looked at me, and I had always looked at him. It struck me now that if I were to lose might sight that instant, the image I would have best in my memory would be that of Uriah Heep. I knew his every gesture: the way he scraped his jaw with his hand, the way he writhed when he wanted to appear fawning and humble, the way his nostrils often flared with amusement instead of his eyes twinkling, the way he hugged himself under the chin. I knew best how he looked when he was at work, for that was his chief activity and had always been when I had found myself looking longest and most intently at him, but I also knew how he looked when he was at his leisure, and even when he was asleep (for once a few months ago I had entered his office late to find him slumped over his desk snoring). His image belonged to me—I had claimed it through long, careful study. I had never realized until now how it pleased me to have it, and how I wanted not just his image but his self, his soul. Now he gave it to me, because he loved me, and I loved him in return for that, and for his anger and his passion and his cleverness, for his mind that plotted, for his heart that loved and hated with such terrible force.

I did not disdain his cowardice, nor did I recoil at his malice. I found no terror in his threats. Not because I thought them to be as the idle wind, as Brutus might have thought them, but because I felt myself to be a match for the gale of his spite. I had sway over him, and I knew it now; I had seen it again and again that night. But that was not all that gave me strength and hope. I knew I wanted as much, that I was as hungry. And I was strong in my love for him. I could face the worst of him and feel more love than fear, and that was a kind of power too. His words felt like the ropes that held me up (increasingly uncomfortably), cutting into me, yet keeping me as I wished to be. My mind was quicker and cleverer than it had ever felt. We would have a loving quarrel for every season: we would play Brutus and Cassius, Beatrice and Benedick, Kate and Petruchio. He was clever as old nick, and very determined, but I knew now that in some things I could, and would, prevail absolutely. Agnes and Wickfield would never come to harm now that I knew his heart. 

“I shall never know what it is for you to love me, Uriah. You are yourself, and I am myself, and I cannot know that I like you as you like me,” I said with such earnestness and fervor that he started and jerked, “but I know in my very soul that I can return you passion for passion, love for love, and that if you’ll only let me down you’ll soon know the truth of what I say.”

He stared at me a moment. His hand came over his heart, and it seemed like he would speak, but he did not. He picked up the knife and started towards me quickly. His hands came up to where mine were, but then he stopped and cursed. “I am sorry to leave you like this a moment longer, for I am sure it ain't very comfortable, but I must pause a breath so I’ll be steady enough to cut these knots without doing you any harm,” he said all at once.

I listened to him breathe a minute. At first there was a rasp to it, which softened to a little catch that was still not usual for him. At last, he quieted entirely. I drew in the smell of him, looked about the room. Everything seemed very sharp and very clear and very wonderful.

“Oh, what a night this as been,” he said, a little theatrically. Then he at last cut the knots, and we fell into each other’s arms. 

**

It was almost dawn. Uriah continuously nodded towards sleep, then jerked forcefully awake, but I did not feel tired at all. I had felt before a sense of great hopefulness, but I had never quite been able to imagine what I might really do with myself. Now I was thinking with great excitement about what might be required to live beside Uriah Heep always. I might come work for Wickfield a while, and if Uriah became Wickfield’s partner he might live in the house with me. I could creep each night into his bed, and he into mine. But this seemed to me a boy’s plan. Better to make our home in London together. He could be a great lawyer, I felt sure. I would smooth the way for Uriah if anyone looked down on him for being, as he would say, humble. I could admit, at last that Uriah had spoken the truth when he had told me that people didn’t always take kindly to him coming up in the world. I determined then that if it cost me a thousand sleepless nights, I would make sure I was in a position where a good word from me might make some difference. I would be a bully if the situation called for it. We would rise together, and he would be happy. Truth be told, I could hardly wait for such striving. How alive I felt, how ready for struggle and toil in the name of love. If only there had been a dragon to slay that night! 

“Stay by me, Uriah. Let’s live together in London,” I said, my imaginary battle on his behalf making me a little imperious. 

Uriah chuckled a little, aloud. I had never heard the sound before, and so I knew he liked the idea enormously, whatever he said. “Being the umble man I am, well, I suppose it must be London, as David Copperfield says.” He slowly curled his arm around my shoulders, as though he might startle me like a horse in doing it. “There is a man I had taken some interest in working for--as a numble clerk only, mind, for I ain’t fully a lawyer yet--who seemed to like me more than a little when we met some time ago. One Mr. Jaggers. Now he’s getting on in his years, and he mentioned to me that not one of his clerks could do as he does in the way of getting his clients out of trouble. Well, he said, he thought perhaps I could do it, for I was a shrewd one, he had eyes to see. Although he couldn’t say for sure, being a careful sort. I’ll visit him tomorrow and I’ll write to Mr. Wickfield directly and tell him I’ve got wind of another umble opportunity for myself, and am staying in London a few weeks to look into it. He can keep back my usual wages if he pleases. I’m not much in his trust of late, and with pretty good reason, Copperfield, as you know.” He seemed almost to fall asleep in the midst of telling me this, and to wrench himself out of it. “But I’ve him pretty well under my thumb, and he won’t say a word against it, or take a new clerk on hastily. I’ve enough money saved to afford it all, just about, if I stay in umbler digs. It’ll serve im better eventually, to ave me out of his way.”

“That you can talk of all that so lightly!” I exclaimed. I couldn’t imagine nearly nodding off while talking of Wickfield in that way. I was a little shocked that he could, but only a little.

“Talk of what, Copperfield?” He asked. 

“I rather mean to say that you can admit Wickfield doesn’t much trust you, and with good reason, while dropping off to sleep.”

“Oh, yes. But as I say, I’ll forgive and forget being trodden on as I ave been, seeing as you love me. Didn’t you say you loved me?” He said plaintively. Uriah was devilishly sharp, I knew, and I reckoned that he was pretty confident that I was not really very angry, for all I ought to be. He had invented a reply that would either answer my teasing or wheedle me towards a gentler mood, if I really did mind a great deal. He was about as sincere as a judas kiss, and I knew it. God help me, but it made me fonder of him!

“I did, and I do,” I told him, and it was perfectly true.

“Oh, Copperfield,” Uriah murmured, and his hand tightened like a vice on my shoulder, and this time I knew he was absolutely in earnest.

“‘Ave you got any appointment with your friend?” Uriah asked, after a little time. 

For a moment I confess I hadn’t the slightest idea what he was talking about, but it soon came to me that he meant Steerforth. It occurred to me that Uriah, if I allowed it, would ruin my meeting with Steerforth any way he could. This would not stand. It was, it seemed to me, the first battle to be pitched between us, though a small one. It had tormented Uriah to madness to see how fond I was of Steerforth, and I could well understand why he should resent him. But Uriah had nothing to fear. Steerforth was the dearest friend of my childhood, and I would always love him. But now as a man I could at last admit that my friend, who had showed himself not at all changed from his youth, could never be to me what I had determined to make Uriah, whether Steerforth was willing or no. Uriah brought out my ugliest devils, but it was Steerforth who caused me to turn a deaf ear to my conscience and my better judgment. When one admits one’s worst impulses, one can battle them, or use them to a purpose, and so I had begun to do. This night had given me courage I had not known before. In company with Steerforth, I had labored to forget what I found best and truest in myself for the sake of preserving our mutual regard. Steerforth was often careless and unkind, for all that he was ever and always exceedingly charming. I might enjoy a morning in conference with him, or an afternoon at his house, but to part from Steerforth would be to part from a friend, where to part now from Uriah would be to part from love, from truth, from life. And so Uriah had nothing to fear, but did not know it. I desired to see my friend without Uriah ruining the affair. And so the time had come already to put to the test my certainty that I might set myself against Uriah and come out the winner, after all.

“He said he’ll call on me downstairs when he’s awake, which I don’t expect will be before noon,” I said airily.

“That’s about consistent with my impression of im,” Uriah said. He noticed nothing at all amiss in my remark, and when he closed his eyes, he shut them as if at last he knew he would reign lord and master of the world for ever, and could rest satisfied. He slept in that large, pillowy bed like a corpse. 

**  
The waiter brought me to Steerforth where he waited in a private apartment, sealed snugly off from the coffee room, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where the fire burnt bright and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a clean cloth. I ate hungrily and happily, while we talked for a long while of very little. At length he asked about that lanky old fellow I’d been taking coffee with last night. That was Mr. Heep, my companion, I told him, a little shyly, but also with some evident excitement. I found I quite longed to talk of him. 

“Isn’t it very common that when two men are dear companions, one is a very Daisy, and the other is a toad!” Steerforth said, laughing. “You ought to have a care with that one, I reckon.”

“Thank you, Steerforth, I shall,” I said, and meant it, “but he is a dearer friend to me than you could know.”

Steerforth made a careful study of me with his bright eyes in but a moment, and smiled. “You do like him very much indeed, don’t you, Daisy? I spoke lightly, but this is no light matter to you, after all, is it? I suppose he must have hidden qualities of great worth, for you to speak so of him. You must keep him close about you, after all, if that’s the way of it.” 

I flushed, for he spoke very kindly, as he so often did with me, and because I knew I must have shown him much of my heart indeed just then. Though he could not have guessed—no, not even he, man of the world as he was at twenty two—with what wild passion we had loved in the room beside his the previous night. I was grateful to him for being as a true friend as I could wish, and when we parted I shook his hand again and again in gratitude.

When Uriah came down at last at noon I was taking coffee in the private room where I had met Steerforth, not at all hungry after breakfasting so largely. Uriah looked at me with a sort of terror, and I looked steadily back at him.

“But why did you tell me he wouldn’t be up until noon! You lied to me!” He cried at last.

I was already very practiced at suffocating my pity for Uriah, and I did it now.

“You have shown me your very soul,” I told him. “The consequence is, I know how you would have twisted yourself into a knot that would make those you tied last night die with envy, if you had come down while he was here. What a misery you would have made for us all, and to no end whatever. I told him what a friend you are to me, and he understood me better even than perhaps I intended him to, for I can never hide my heart from those who know me well. But he was kind about it, very kind, and now he has taken his kindness off with him. I believe he will be visiting his mother, then back to Oxford.”

Uriah gave me a mulish look that told me he was not yet won over. I had not really expected he would be.

“These are very intimate environs. Did you meet im in here?” he asked.

“Yes. However, I remained in here because it seemed the right place to say what I am about to say to you now.” I dropped to my knees. “Uriah, I love you and I am yours, and I have determined that shall be yours for all of my life. I know I am young, but we have known each other a long time, long enough for me to be very certain of what we may be to each other. I would like to give myself to you with a little more grace than I did last night, when I demanded that you come to London with me. Will you have me?”

I was forgiven, I knew immediately. Uriah fell to his knees beside me and took my hands in his. “Yes, a thousand times yes,” he said. Though he knew I was being a little conniving, he also knew that I would not do such a thing as I was doing now at all lightly. What excellent care I took of his appiness, he said, laughing his curious silent laugh again, but this time touchingly flushed with pleasure, and with a very bright eye. 

I crowned my triumph with a proposal that we attend a matinee of Henry IV, which played that afternoon at the Lyceum. We would be just in time after Uriah had breakfasted a little, as I had thought we would be. 

And so it was that, arm in arm, and in the grand sort of spirits of two young men about to tear the world to pieces with their glory, we went out into the day.


End file.
